Cosmopolitanism

Embracing all humanity as one’s own is the core of the modern idea of cosmopolitanism, but the present time with rising tribalism, populism, racism, and narrow-minded nationalism is not propitious for cosmopolitanism. At a time like this, the cosmopolitan effort to see cultures and peoples as close to one another rather than absolutely different becomes all the more important. The comparative study of different cultures and literatures may promote a cosmopolitan stance, and from a comparative perspective, we may draw some (...) ideas from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius for a theory of global ethics. *. (shrink)

Introduction -- The Complexity of Resource Curse -- Resource Curse as a Complex Case of Global Justice -- General Theory of Global Justice -- The Robustness of the General Theory -- Conclusion.

In the 21st century, as the peoples of the world grow more closely tied together, the question of real transnational government will finally have to be faced. The end of the Cold War has not brought the peace, freedom from atrocities, and decline of tyranny for which we hoped. It is also clearer now that problems like economic risks, tax havens, and environmental degradation arising with global markets are far outstripping the governance capacities of our 20th century system of distinct (...) nation-states, even when they try to work together through intergovernmental agreements and organized bureaucracies of specialists. This work defends a cosmopolitan approach to global justice by arguing for new ways to combine the strengths of democratic nations in order to prevent mass atrocities and to secure other global public goods. While protecting cultural pluralism, Davenport argues that a Democratic League would provide a legal order capable of uniting the strength and inspiring moral vision of democratic nations to improve international security, stop mass atrocities, assist developing nations in overcoming corruption and poverty, and, in time, potentially address other global challenges in finance, environmental sustainability, stable food supplies, immigration, and so on. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, philosophy and global justice. (shrink)

The European Union entered into an economic crisis in late 2009 that was sparked by bank bailouts and led to large, unsustainable, sovereign debt. The crisis was European in scale, but hit some countries in the Eurozone harder than others. Despite the plethora of writings devoted to the economic crisis in Europe, present understandings of how the political decisions would influence the integration project continue to remain vague. What does it actually mean to be European? Is Europe still a collection (...) of peoples that rallied together during good times and then retreat to nationalism when challenges appear? Or has Europe adopted a common identity that would foster solidarity during hard times? This book provides its reader with a fresh perspective on the importance identity has on the functioning of the European Union as exemplified in Jürgen Habermas' seminal text, 'The Crisis of the European Union: A Response'. Rather than exploring the causes of the crisis, the contributors examine the current state of European identity to determine the likelihood of implementing Habermas' suggestions. The contributor's interdisciplinary approach is organized into four parts and examines the following key areas of concern: Habermas' arguments, placing them into their historical context. To which degree do Europeans share the ideals Habermas describes as crucial to his program of reform. Influence of Habermas' cosmopolitanism through religious and literary lenses. Impact of Habermas' notions in the arenas of education, national economies, austerity, and human rights. Jürgen Habermas and the European Economic Crisiswill be read by scholars in the fields of Political Theory and Philosophy, European Politics and Cultural Studies. (shrink)

This book explores the idea of religious pluralism while defending the norms of secular cosmopolitanism, which include liberty, tolerance, civility, and hospitality. The secular cosmopolitan ideal requires us to be more tolerant and more hospitable toward religious believers and non-believers from diverse traditions in our religiously pluralistic world. Some have argued that the world s religions can be united around a common core. This book argues that it is both impossible and inadvisable either to reduce religion to one thing or (...) to deny religion. Instead, the book affirms non reductive pluralism and seeks to understand how we should live in a pluralistic world. Building on work in the sociology of religion and philosophy of religion, the book examines the grown of religious diversity in the contemporary world. It argues that religious toleration, hospitality, and compassion must be extended in a global direction. Secular cosmopolitanism recognizes that each person has a right to his or her deepest beliefs and that the diversity of the world s religious and non-religious traditions cannot be reduced or eliminated. ". (shrink)

Richard Rorty was one of the most controversial and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. Known primarily for his attacks on truth and the idea that knowledge is a ‘mirror of nature’, his contribution as a humanist and a great moralist has been overlooked by recent scholarship. McClean re-evaluates Rorty’s work in the light of his liberal cosmopolitan outlook, showing how it can be applied to a range of social and political issues, including international terrorism, religious fundamentalism, neo-liberalism, sexual (...) politics and business culture. (shrink)

The core idea shared by all cosmopolitan views is that all human beings belong to a single community and the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human beings, not states or particular forms of human associations. Nevertheless, the attempts to ground a political theory on overarching universal principles is in contradiction with the plurality of social, cultural, political, religious interpretative standpoints in the contemporary world. Is dissent cosmopolitan? Is there a legacy of dissent for a theory of cosmopolitanism? This (...) book is a comparative, historical analysis of dissident thought and practice for contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism. Divided into two parts, the editors and contributors explore the contribution of 'paradigmatic' dissidents like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Havel, Sakharov, Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Aung San Suu Kyi towards a post-universalist cosmopolitan theory. Part Two examines the inherent cosmopolitanism of the seemingly 'peripheral' dissent of contemporary forms of protests, resistance, direct action like NO TAV movement and Occupy Wall Street. A timely book which allows for a much needed new engagement in contemporary debates of cosmopolitanism, we learn how practical resistance to totalizing/hegemonic claims is generated, and how dissident thinking might contribute to new, enriched ways of conceiving the non-totalizing foundations of cosmopolitanism. An innovative look at what lessons can scholars of cosmopolitanism learn from dissent/dissident movements, and what the role of dissent in cosmopolitan democracy could be. (shrink)

Winner of the 2013 American Educational Studies Association's 2013 Critics Choice Award! Teachers the world over are seeking creative ways to respond to the problems and possibilities generated by globalization. Many of them work with children and youth from increasingly varied backgrounds, with diverse needs and capabilities. Others work with homogeneous populations and yet are aware that their students will encounter many cultural changes in their lifetimes. All struggle with the contemporary conditions of teaching: endless top-down measures to manipulate what (...) they do, rapid economic turns and inequality in supportive resources that affect their lives and those of their students, a torrent of media stimuli that distract educational focus, and growth as well as shifts in population. In The Teacher and the World, David T. Hansen provides teachers with a way to reconstruct their philosophies of education in light of these conditions. He describes an orientation toward education that can help them to address both the challenges and opportunities thrown their way by a globalized world. Hansen builds his approach around cosmopolitanism, an ancient idea with an ever-present and ever-beautiful meaning for educators. The idea pivots around educating for what the author calls reflective openness to new people and new ideas, and reflective loyalty toward local values, interests, and commitments. The book shows how this orientation applies to teachers at all levels of the system, from primary through university. Hansen deploys many examples to illustrate how its core value, a balance of reflective openness to the new and reflective loyalty to the known, can be cultivated while teaching different subjects in different kinds of settings. The author draws widely on the work of educators, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, novelists, artists, travellers and others from both the present and past, as well as from around the world. These diverse figures illuminate the promise in a cosmopolitan outlook on education in our time. In this pioneering book, Hansen has provided teachers, heads of school, teacher educators, researchers, and policy-makers a generative way to respond creatively to the pressure and the promise of a globalizing world. (shrink)

This is a work of South Asian intellectual history written from a transnational perspective and based on the life and work of M.N. Roy, one of India's most formidable Marxist intellectuals. Swadeshi revolutionary, co-founder of the Mexican Communist Party, member of the Communist International Presidium, and a major force in the rise of Indian communism, M.N. Roy was a colonial cosmopolitan icon of the interwar years. Exploring the intellectual production of this important thinker, this book traces the historical context of (...) his ideas from 19th-century Bengal to Weimar Germany, through the tumultuous period of world politics in the 1930s and 1940s, and on to post-Independence India. In this book the author makes a number of valuable theoretical contributions. He argues for the importance of conceiving the 'deterritorial' zones of thought and action through which Indian anti-colonial political thought operated, and advances a new periodisation for Swadeshi on this basis. He also argues against viewing 'international communism' of the 1920s as a single monolith by highlighting the fractures and contestations that influenced colonial politics worldwide. A fresh and insightful perspective on the history of India in the interwar years, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of the modern history of South and East Asia, America and Europe, and to those interested in anti-colonial struggles, Communist politics and trajectories of Marxist thought in the 20th century. (shrink)

By defining cosmopolitanism and analysing how cosmopolitan ideas can increasingly provide an account of the governance of global finance, Brassett examines whether global finance can be regulated so as to provide cosmopolitan values like social security, equality and democratic accountability. He suggests that such an exercise is not adequately resourced by existing theoretical approaches to critical IPE and instead develops a new pragmatic approach based on the thought of Richard Rorty. Combining ethical theory with empirical analysis, he focuses on the (...) Tobin taxû ûand explores whether it could underpin more cosmopolitan forms of global financial governance. --. (shrink)

Debates over the ethics of war, economic redistribution, resource consumption and the rights and responsibilities associated with membership of a political community are just some of the major conflicts of principle identified and analyzed by Thomas Kane which characterize world politics today.

We are now at a crossroads for the world created by the Coronavirus Pandemic. This essay is meant to help us understand the present dilemma we are in, and the New World we may be entering, by revisiting the roots and routes of some of the great transformative educators of the twentieth century, those giants whose shoulders we stand on as we face the terrifying uncertainty of the Pandemic. The value of cosmopolitan thinking is that it sees both global obligations (...) and the celebration of local differences as important. Embracing a critical cosmopolitanism and moving border thinking from the margins to the center will enable and empower all of us to imagine a new future together. (shrink)

This chapter examines the shift from parochialism to globalism in ethics and its implications for the project of global media ethics. It discusses what form of globalism should explain and justify media ethics. The chapter argues that, today, we face a choice between globalism—to place global principles at the basis of ethics—and parochialism—to make parochial principles primary in ethical belief systems. The chapter examines cosmopolitanism as an historical, and still attractive, form of globalism. It sketches its origins, kinds, main beliefs, (...) and issues. Then it considers what type of cosmopolitanism is best. The chapter concludes by proposing the ethic of global human flourishing, with its four levels of the human good and four corresponding kinds of dignity. (shrink)

While universalism is rooted in the very ideology of Islam and is grounded in the Qur’an, especially through the concepts of fiṭra, amr and rūḥ, cosmopolitanism is an essential characteristic of classical Muslim empires: both the Caliphate-Imamate and empires, like the Ottoman or the Mughal ones, were a melting pot of races, languages and customs. The Caliphate-Imamate was by nature supranational and for centuries there was no idea of the nation in Islam. Contemporary nationalism, local or global, have represented a (...) disrupting more than a unifying force and have produced many failed states. In the present situation of crisis of the Muslim world, Puritanism and blind adherence to past tradition have paved the way for the revival of intolerance. Conservative or even extremist Islamist movements have assumed the deformed perspective of retrospective utopia, convinced that it is sufficient to reproduce the conditions of the Prophet’s time to solve all problems of Muslim societies. Hence, the Islamic state and Caliphate’s issues must be re-discussed from new perspectives, by recovering the potentials of universalism and cosmopolitanism in the tradition. It is central today the role of civil society, wherein Islamic universalism and cosmopolitanism could find their natural space, and the same goes for the role of citizenship. Reform requires a re-consideration of classical Islamic juridical and political thought patterns, which this chapter aims to do by, first, focalizing certain paradigms and concepts, and by, second, problematizing the modern meanings given to these paradigms and concepts. At the closure, I contend that it is in civil society that traditional meanings of universalism and cosmopolitanism can flourish again for functional political thought and praxis. (shrink)

Do we have moral duties to people in distant parts of the world? If so, how demanding are these duties? And how can they be reconciled with our obligations to fellow citizens? -/- Every year, millions of people die from poverty-related causes while countless others are forced to flee their homes to escape from war and oppression. At the same time, many of us live comfortably in safe and prosperous democracies. Yet our lives are bound up with those of the (...) poor and dispossessed in multiple ways: our clothes are manufactured in Asian sweatshops; the oil that fuels our cars is purchased from African and Middle Eastern dictators; and our consumer lifestyles generate environmental changes that threaten Bangladeshi peasants with drought and famine. These facts force us to re-evaluate our conduct and to ask whether we must do more for those who have less. -/- Helping students to grapple with big questions surrounding justice, human rights, and equality, this comprehensive yet accessible textbook features chapters on a variety of pressing issues such as Immigration, International Trade, War, and Climate Change. Suitable for undergraduate and graduate students alike, the book also serves as a philosophical primer for politicians, activists, and anyone else who cares about justice. (shrink)

One of the possible ways of conceptualising the overwhelming challenges now facing the countries of the African continent is to say that the people of Africa cope with the condition of subalternity. By subalternity, I understand as an inability to direct one’s own fate and to shape the structures of one own society. In this paper, I pose the question, to what extent does the intellectual resources capable of meeting this challenge be found in Karl Popper’s philosophy? In order to (...) outline an answer to this question, I explore some philosophical and political ideas put forward by Popper in order to see how they can help us to understand those challenges, and possibly to deal with them. Firstly, I refer to the experience of the Central and Eastern European countries whose comprehensive transformation of 1989 has been guided to a significant degree by Popper’s idea of the open society, and to the present revival of the exclusionary tendencies in the region. I argue that his view of the acceptable reform, based on the conception of the piecemeal engineering, which unduly delimit the scope of the political action, is excessively conservative. Secondly, I critically examine his contentious claim that western civilization is not only the best of the existing worlds but also morally superior to others. Thirdly, I argue that through his construal of the enemies of the open society, Popper intended to expunge from the European tradition the tendencies he perceived as negative which are, nevertheless, an essential ingredient of that tradition. Following a critical appraisal of Popper’s understanding of equality and unity, I suggest that the theory of recognition based on the concept of diversity may provide a more effective theoretical foundation for a new cosmopolitanism capable of addressing the problems of today’s Africa, as well as those of today’s Europe. (shrink)

Migration und Armut sind eng miteinander verbunden. Für die meisten Migrant*innen ist Armut der Grund, ihre Heimat zu verlassen, um anderswo ein günstigeres wirtschaftliches Umfeld zu finden. Der Internationalen Organisation für Migration zufolge lag die Zahl der sogenannten Arbeitsmigrant*innen im Jahr 2015 weltweit bei 150,3 Millionen, bei einer Gesamtzahl von 247,6 Millionen Migrant* innen. Diese Zahlen erfassen Migrant* innen mit offizieller Arbeitserlaubnis und es ist anzunehmen, dass die Zahl von Arbeitsmigrant*innen ohne legale Dokumente deutlich höher ist.

I revisit themes from Against Borders: Why the World Needs Free Movement of People(2020) in dialogue with Gillian Brock’s Justice of People on the Move(2020) and Sarah Song’sImmigration and Democracy (2019). We share the conviction that current border regimes are deeply unjust but differ in what migration justice requires. Brock and Song continue to give states significant discretion to exclude people from entering and settling in their territories, whereas I contend that migration justice demands open borders. I reject the claim (...) that state self-determination justifies migration restrictions. Central arguments for open borders high-light the role that restrictive border controls and the state category of‘immigrant’ play in upholding racialised hierarchies and exploitative economic relations, as well as in inflicting violence against mobile people. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save the (...) charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

In his recent book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Evan Thompson argues that inter-tradition or cross-cultural philosophical dialogue ought to be governed by cosmopolitan conversational norms that do not subsume any one tradition’s deep commitments under those of any other tradition, but rather bring those commitments into the discussion so that they can be challenged and defended. He argues on this basis for the application of a deeply contextualist and historicist interpretive methodology to Buddhist texts, concepts, and theories in (...) dialogue with philosophy and contemporary cognitive sciences. Buddhist modernism, in eschewing that deeply contextualist and historicist methodology, falls short of those cosmopolitan commitments. We argue that Thompson’s cosmopolitan commitments do not mandate the deeply contextualist and historicist methodology he recommends. As an alternative, we propose a creolizing methodology that finds value in mixing, reinterpreting, and reinventing cultural traditions and other forms of belonging to address the complex problems the world faces. We suggest that such a creolizing methodology can be found in other forms of Buddhist modernism than those Thompson criticizes. We provide, as two examples, the thought of the Chinese monk Taixu and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. (shrink)

In a new interpretation, Garrett Wallace Brown considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands. He explores and defends topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice.

Cosmopolitanism has its origin, Francisco Bethencourt claims, in the sixteenth century, and most famously in the self-definition by Guillaume Postel on the title-page of his book De la Ré...

Hannah Arendt’s fierce critique of sovereignty, along with her excavation of Greek agonism, has gained much traction among critical theorists of international politics who revisit the basic assumptions of conventional international theories, such as state sovereignty and power as domination. This paper engages with an increasingly popular stream within such critical international studies that appropriates Arendt’s agonism to envision a form of a global public acting in concert. I argue that Arendt’s thoughts cannot be reduced to a radical vision of (...) agonistic cosmo-politics. Rather, her thinking suggests that political actors appreciate and care for their public worlds while remaining alert to institutional ossification. Her appreciation of the constitutional state confirms that state agency is an important element of her thoughts. By examining the vicissitudes of publicity found in Arendt’s thinking and their reflexive effect on inter-polity relations, the article elucidates the grounds of her international agonism and brings home a form of international politics where states pursuing the domestic goal of greatness coexist and cooperate. Thus, the study suggests that critical scholars of radical agonism miss the important implications of an “institutional” Arendt for international politics. (shrink)

Today’s world is increasingly being defined as a global village in the sense that the revolution in ICT has ensured the interconnectedness of the entire world in a way that leads to radical redefinitions of most of our cherished concepts and ideas. For instance, the ideas of the nation and of nationalism are daily being assaulted by what has come to be regarded as the “cosmopolitan imagination.” Cosmopolitanism insists that our beingness in the world should be reassessed given the fact (...) of globalization and the deepening plurality that essentially undermines all forms of national consciousness and of the identity of the self too. Postmodern cosmopolitanism therefore questions the traditional definition of the self along territorial boundaries and ethnic lines. And this argument is reinforced by the economic imperative which Empire imposes on the entire globe, according to Hardt and Negri. In this essay, I argue that from cosmopolitanism’s and postmodernism’s ambivalent relationship with modernity, it seems too hasty to think that we are facing the erasure of nationalism and identities as we know it. In spite of postmodern cosmopolitanism, the discourse of identity is still a pertinent one, as fundamentalism, for instance, reveals. Thus, the modern subject, rather than being totally defined by a cosmopolitan imagination, is actually a self caught in a maelstrom defined around unity and fragmentation, of nationality and internationalization. (shrink)

This volume... systematically considers the nature of the state, the concept of sovereignty and the challenges globalisation and cosmopolitanism.--Provided by publisher.

International relations (IR) scholars have increasingly integrated Hannah Arendt into their works. Her fierce critique of the conventional ideas of politics driven by rulership, enforcement, and violence has a particular resonance for theorists seeking to critically revisit the basic assumptions of IR scholarship. Arendt’s thinking, however, contains complexity and nuance that need careful treatment when extended beyond domestic politics. In particular, Arendt’s vision of free politics—characterized by the dualistic emphasis on agonistic action and institutional stability—raises two crucial issues that need (...) further elaboration for IR research that appropriates her thinking. One involves the orientation of her international thoughts. Although Arendt shows “idealistic” aspirations for authentic politics practiced by diverse equals in an institutionally articulated space of freedom, she never loses interest in the extant situation of “non-idealistic” politics. Engaging with Arendt’s theory orientation requires a careful analysis of difficult topics, such as her distinctive conception of the political and her critiques of the nation-state and international law. The other topic that needs clarification when Arendt’s thoughts are applied to IR involves specific ways of associating different sites of power. A close examination of Arendt’s council-based federalism reveals her distinctive idea of international politics, based on her acute awareness of the fundamental complexity that lies in power association and state agency. Bringing IR topics like state agency into conversation with her works generates illuminating questions for Arendt scholarship. Likewise, the ongoing debate on agonistic and institutional features of Arendt’s thoughts can provide crucial insights into critical studies of international politics. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism has its origin, Francisco Bethencourt claims, in the sixteenth century, and most famously in the self-definition by Guillaume Postel on the title-page of his book De la Ré...

Technology offers unique sets of opportunities, from human flourishing to civilization survival, but also challenges, from partial misuse to global apocalypse. Yet technology is shaped by the social environment in which it is developed and used, prompting questions about its desirable governance format. In this context, we look at governance challenges of large technical systems, specifically the peaceful use of high-power lasers in space, in order to propose a conceptual framework for legitimate global governance. Specifically, we adopt a context-based approach (...) to legitimacy to address the trade-offs between effectiveness (output legitimacy) and inclusivity (input legitimacy) in the governance of large technical systems. We show that distinguishing two basic phases of space laser policy which call for different legitimacy criteria helps balance out the trade-offs without sacrificing either effectiveness or inclusivity. Finally, we construe LTSs’ governance as a tool for creating globally networked spaces which may enable coordinated global democratic governance. (shrink)

This chapter canvasses the debate between John Rawls and his cosmopolitan critics over the demands of economic justice that arise beyond state borders. In particular, it examines the merits of four defenses of the position Rawls advances in The Law of Peoples that justice does not call for a cross-society egalitarian distributive principle: first, that such a principle would fail to hold states responsible for their economic position; second, that because societies do not have a fundamental interest in wealth, they (...) would not favor such a principle; third, that satisfying such a principle would not be feasible; and, fourth, that appeal to Rawls's constructivist methodology can explain why the egalitarian principles he takes to be suited for the state context are not suited for the international context. The chapter concludes that upon careful examination, none of these defenses succeed in plausibly motivating Rawls's rejection of global egalitarianism. (shrink)

Tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti are two Chinese concepts that are of significance for reflecting on ‘China and Global Development.’ Both present a revival of cosmopolitanism in China, while a...

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

In this essay, I engage with the methodological contributions and original readings of Fanon and Rousseau contained in Jane Anna Gordon’s Creolizing Political Theory. I build upon one insight in particular––Gordon’s illuminating joint reading of Rousseau’s general will and Fanon’s national consciousness—in order to reflect on Fanon’s ambivalence about Pan-Africanism. In this task, I engage with W.E.B. Du Bois’s transnational thinking in order to parse out the tensions as well as the reciprocal relation between national consciousness and transnational or cosmopolitan (...) engagements. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book analyses the process of labour commodification, through which the individual’s ability to earn a basic living becomes dependent on the conditions of the market relationship. Building on the premise that the separation of a group of individuals from the means of production is an intrinsic element of capitalism, Fausto Corvino theorises that this implies a form of domination in a neo-republican sense. -/- Proposing an original theory of global justice denoted as a minimum de-commodification of labour power, (...) this book explains the ways in which this cosmopolitan principle resists the criticisms that are commonly advanced against classic theories of global justice and charts a theory falling between the neo-republican and labour republican approaches. It stimulates the debate on, and moral critique of, capitalism and the obstacles it poses to individual freedoms, with a focus on exploitation and domination. -/- Global Justice, Markets and Domination will be a key resource for students and scholars researching capitalism and analytical Marxism, political economics and human rights. It will also be of benefit to those interested in theories of global and distributive justice and the economic implications of the neo-republican theory of freedom as non-domination. (shrink)

Bringing together various scholars from different backgrounds and embodying a truly interdisciplinary approach make Sufism: A Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations a valuable and timely contribution to the increasing interest in non-Western traditions of thought. It will be of interest to IR theorists as well as scholars in other disciplines who are interested in non-Western traditions of thought and is sure to motivate further research in IR that is inspired by Sufism.

In the following reflection Claudio Corradetti and Allen Wood engage in a controversy concerning the possibilities and the limits of textual interpretation. Should an interpreter still be authorized to call an author’s interpretation the logical stretch of text beyond its black printed letters? The authors offer two different standpoints on what can still be defined as textual interpretation. Whereas for Allen Wood a clear-cut separation must be kept between what a text shows and what an interpreter argues starting from the (...) text, for Claudio Corradetti such distinction remains internal to textual exegesis in so far as the interpreter’s conclusions follow a logical pattern of jus tification starting from evidential hints. (shrink)

I examine the main anticosmopolitan Rawslian argument, the ‘basic structure argument.’ It holds that distributive justice only applies to existing basic structures, there are only state basic structures, so distributive justice only applies among compatriots. Proponents of the argument face three challenges: 1) they must explain what type of basic structure relation makes distributive justice relevant only among compatriots, 2) they must explain why distributive justice (as opposed to allocative or retributive) is the relevant regulative concept for basic structures, and (...) 3) they must put forth a plausible concept of distributive justice. I show that Rawlsians support what I will call the ‘division of labor thesis’ to answer the first two challenges. Briefly, the division of labor thesis holds that distributive justice only becomes relevant where members of a division of labor jointly produce some socioeconomic product. To meet the third challenge, Rawlsians seem to accept what Elizabeth Anderson calls the ‘modern systemic concept of distributive justice’ – the idea that distributive justice organizes entire economic systems with respect to their distributive consequences or the relationships they maintain. I argue that if Rawlsians accept the systemic concept, they should reject the anticosmopolitan basic structure argument. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.